Friday, January 28, 2011

Clermont went joint second with Racing Metro on the Top 14 table when they beat them 31-15 at the Stade Marcel Michelin on Wednesday evening. There were some great tries scored including a moment of magic from scrumhalf Morgan Parra.

Points difference has meant that Clermont are now second on the table, with Toulouse now sitting comfortably at the top after their win over Montpellier. Clermont have only conceded ten tries this season, so Racing struggled to penetrate the line.

There’s no love lost between the two sides and this game lived up to the hype as the atmosphere in the Stade Marcel Michelin reflected. Gonzalo Canale scored a great try in the first half, before Vincent Debaty and Alexandre Lapandry scored in the second.

Morgan Parra, who kicked 16 points himself, produced some wonderful skill down the touchline for the Lapandry try. France are oozing talent at number nine currently, not a bad thing heading into the Six Nations.

Aurelien Rougerie said the controversy that had been brewing off the field leading up to the game didn’t effect his side in the least bit.

"We had to come up with a big performance against Racing-Metro. We are satisfied to have won but the road is long and we have a lot more things to work on," he said.

The begining of the game was full of stupid fouls, especialy from racing metro: fillol should have been sent off for putting his finger in parra's eye and parra should have got a yellow card for punching him back in the nose.Later it's francois stein who lifted malzieu and smashed him head first to the ground when he didn't even have the ball: straight red card.

Yes that was him. He is not yet on form, and will probably be back at 15 when Wisniewski will come back from suspension. Great talent anyway.Thank you rugbydump, there was some good rugby in that game. Winter did not fit the top 14 well, and we did not see much free flowing rugby, but I bet we will see some nice games again at the end of the season.